There are descriptions of and opinions on some animal welfare certifications here and here. It seems Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane and Animal Welfare Certified (level 5 and up, maybe level 4, too?) should be pretty good.

GAP was funded by Open Phil for its Animal Welfare Certified program back in 2016, and this was one of the first grants Open Phil made in farm animal welfare.

Bitcoin is only up around 20% from its peaks in March and November 2021. It seems far riskier in general than just Nvidia (or SMH) when you look over longer time frames. Nvidia has been hit hard in the past, but not as often or usually as hard.

Smaller cap cryptocurrencies are even riskier.

I also think the case for outperformance of crypto in general is much weaker than for AI stocks, and it has gotten weaker as institutional investment has increased, which should increase market efficiency. I think the case for crypto has mostly been greater fool theory (and partly as an inflation hedge), because it's not a formally productive asset and its actual uses seem overstated to me. And even if crypto were better, you could substantially increase (risk-adjusted) returns by also including AI stocks in your portfolio.

I'm less sure about private investments in general, and they need to be judged individually.

I don't really see why your point about the S&P500 should matter. If I buy 95% AI stocks and 5% other stuff and don't rebalance between them, AI will also have a relatively smaller share if it does relatively badly, e.g. due to regulation.

Maybe there's a sense in which market cap-weighting from across sectors and without specifically overweighting AI/tech is more "neutral", but it really just means deferring to market expectations, market time discount rates and market risk attitudes, which could differ from your own. Equal-weighting (securities above a certain market cap or asset classes) and rebalancing to maintain equal weights seems "more neutral", but also pretty arbitrary and probably worse for risk-adjusted returns.

Furthermore, I can increase my absolute exposure to AI with leverage on the S&P500, like call options, margin or leveraged ETFs. Maybe I assume non-AI stocks will do roughly neutral or in line with the past, or the market as a whole will do so assuming AI progress slows. Then leverage on the S&P500 could really just be an AI play.

How much impact do you expect such a COI to have compared to the extra potential donations?

For reference:

1. You could have more than doubled your investments over the past 1 year period by investing in the right AI companies, e.g. Nvidia, which seemed like a predictably good investment based on market share and % exposure to AI and is up +200% (3x). SMH is up +77%.
2. Even the S&P500 is around 30% Microsoft, Apple (maybe not much of an AI play now), Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Google/Alphabet and Broadcom, and these big tech companies have driven most of its gains recently (e.g. this and this).

And how far do you go in recommending divestment from AI to avoid COIs?

1. Do you think people should avoid the S&P500, because its exposure to AI companies is so high? (Maybe equal-weight ETFs, or specific ETFs missing these companies, or other asset classes.)
2. Do you think people should short or buy put options on AI companies? This way they're even more incentivized to see them do badly.

You could invest in AI stocks through a donor-advised fund or private foundation to reduce the potential for personal gain and so COIs.

What impact do you expect a marginal demand shift of $1 million (or $1 billion) in AI stocks to have on AI timelines? And why?

(Presumably the impact on actual investments in AI is much lower, because of elasticity, price targets for public companies, limits on what private companies intend to raise at a time.)

Or is the concern only really COIs?

On 7

Aquaculture also uses fished animals to feed their animals: therefore bans that lower fishing efforts can also make aquiculture less interesting to be pursued?

I think this would be true for species caught primarily for fishmeal. While those caught for direct human consumption also contribute to fishmeal/fish oil/feed (through byproducts/processing waste, e.g. OECD/FAO, 2023, Figure 8.4), they seem more likely to compete with rather than support aquaculture overall (World Bank, 2013, Table E.2, scenario 5 Capture growth vs Baseline).

On the other hand, shrimp are major fishmeal consumers, so a decrease in fishmeal even with a decrease in overall fish and invertebrate catch could reduce shrimp farming in particular and the number of animals farmed, even if it increases aquaculture by tonnage. The increase in aquaculture by tonnage could result from an increase in more herbivorous species, like carps, tilapias, catfishes and bivalves. That being said, I'm not confident that it would decrease the number of animals farmed.

On the other hand again, banning fishing, especially for fishmeal, could also promote insect farming for aquafeed. But we could work on that, too.

So, it seems pretty messy.

On point 5

Fishing alone, especially illegal and industrial, already had depleted more than 70% of species (which are being overfished or are on the verge of collapse), it destroys 50x more land annually than deforestation.

Where did you get 70% of (fished?^[1]) species are depleted? Or do you mean in the past, but things might be better now? This seems much higher than related numbers I'm familiar with.

It seems that around 66% of stocks that are fished are fished sustainably vs 34% overfished, and 79% of catch by weight comes from sustainably fished stocks vs 21% from overfished (FAO, 2022, Figure 23, Ritchie & Roser, 2021–2024).

"on the verge of collapse" suggests they are likely to collapse, but that isn't obvious, because it's possible to maintain stocks in an overfished/overfishing equilibrium, or governments may intervene to restrict fishing (e.g. seasonal closures, total allowable catch) to protect against collapse when it gets closer. And even if/when there is a collapse, there can be recovery, e.g. like Peruvian anchoveta, which could be supported by government. Of course, recovery may not go well, e.g. NW Atlantic cod.

By land destroyed by fishing, I assume you mean bottom trawling/dredging. Unlike deforestation, this is mostly the same land being affected each year, and recovery could be faster. Governments are also likely to eventually limit bottom trawling separately from fishing as a whole, because it's much less sustainable.

All of this is the result of particular kinds of fishing and management practices. Rather than outright bans, governments will just make fishing more sustainable, and then most of these concerns will no longer apply.

Not clear Michael what you mean y saying 'making fishing more sustainable = more fishing, can you elaborate? (Remembering I mention here to ban industrial fishing, not increasing its welfare, which for me is an oxymoron).

When there's overfishing (high fishing pressure or harvest rate, as the biomass caught divided by current biomass), marginal reductions in fishing pressure allow overfished populations to recover, allowing more fish to be caught in the long run. I elaborate in Sustainable fishing policy increases fishing, and demand reductions might, too. Of course, a total ban is a complete reduction, so should in fact reduce catch in the long run. But I don't think bans are very politically feasible, at least not on a large scale, and instead you're likely to get marginal reductions in fishing pressure, e.g. through total allowable catch or quotas. Furthermore, I'd guess even small local bans (marine protected areas) can allow for more fishing in the long run, by reducing fishing pressure on groups that migrate and will be fished elsewhere anyway.

1. ^{^}

   Most species are probably not fished much at all. Only about half of the ocean area is fished. Many species in the same fisheries are not fished much or at all. Most of the ocean by depth, especially the mesopelagic zone and regions away from coasts, is almost entirely unfished.

Hi Nathalie, on point 3

The thinking that fishing is increasing fish populations is certain on short term, but not true long term. A high spike on prey fish means less of their prey, subsequently, therefore diminishing their populations over time.

I would tentatively guess that this doesn't usually fully reverse the effect on prey fish, only dampens and slightly reverses it, so that their populations still settle higher than without fishing their predators. Furthermore, the food (mostly primary production?) of the prey (mostly crustaceans) of the prey fish should increase, too, which could have the opposite effects. I guess this can lead to algal blooms sometimes, though, which could then reduce all local animal populations.

That being said, I worry about this reasoning anyway, because it treats food webs as quite linear. A species X can eat a species Y and the prey Z of Y.

There are a few studies on the effect of removing a predator from their ecosystem resulting not on increase of fish populations or biodiversity, but in fact, the opposite happening: less biodiversity, lower populations, ecosystem collapse. This can be easily noticed in scenarios before and after implementing a Marine Protected Area - I can share a few studies if this helps, let me know. 

By "removing a predator from their ecosystem", do you mean the (near-)complete removal and therefore (near-complete) absence of the predator, or just a reduction in their biomass/populations? The latter seems more representative of fishing to me, especially as management has improved, and local extinction of a predator seems rarer (although it definitely has happened).

I'd be interested in seeing these studies, especially any globally representative aggregates, systematic reviews or meta-analyses to avoid selection bias.

I'll note that Christensen et al., 2014 is a global aggregate (and extrapolation) of simulations (Ecopath models) spanning 100 years (1910-2010), and Bell et al., 2018 is a meta-analysis of observational studies of biomass data across trophic levels, each spanning at least 18 years, and with a mean length of 34 years.

1. Fishing pressure seems to have increased a lot around 1970, and predator biomass had been decreasing much faster since around then, according to Christensen et al., 2014 (Table 3 and Figure 6). So, most of the changes to prey fish biomass should be since around 1970, too. 40 years (2010-1970) seems like it should have been long enough to see reversal in trends for prey fish from feedback on their prey, but the net effect was still an increase in prey fish biomass. That being said, I don't know if the simulations Christensen et al., 2014 used in fact simulated the effects of prey fish on their prey and feedback from that, although I'd guess they did.
2. I'd guess 18 years in Bell et al., 2018 is long enough to see feedback from the prey of prey fish, too. We actually do see that many of the increasing trends in small fish populations (in red) reverse into decreasing trends in Figure 5 in Bell et al., 2018, but the trends vary substantially by survey/region and the reversals also often seems to coincide with reductions in fishing pressure (FPI, the background colour going from grey to lighter grey or white; this was the case for S St Lawrence, GSO-Fox Island, GSO-Whale Rock, Georges Bank, Mid-Atlantic), so there's some confounding here to worry about.

An initiative needs to be simple enough to attract votes (confused voters vote no), but complex enough to address the biggest animal welfare challenges (e.g. try defining higher welfare broiler breeds in a way the average voter will endorse).

Do you think broiler breed ballot initiatives are worth trying or at least investigating further, given the potential upside and cost-effectiveness of cage-free ballot initiatives (Duffy, 2023)? EDIT: Also see Khimasia, 2023 on potential broiler ballot initiatives, from CE/AIM's research program.

Have there been surveys/polls on potential broiler initiatives (target states, wording, etc.)?

They seem quite promising to me, but the first step should be further investigation, e.g. finding the best wording for expected impact (impact if passed x probability of passing).

What's going on with the progress on breeds for the Better Chicken Commitment? I've heard it hasn't been going well. But I think I also read the BCC hadn't actually settled on breeds until after many commitments were made, so we wouldn't expect them to start making progress on breeds until after that, anyway. But I think we have settled on approved breeds for a while now.